A very close relative met her judgement day over the weekend. A clubber in the dives of south London, she had made the move from a naive middle-class childhood, substantially educated, to the margins of grave criminality. She became a Yardie's moll without even knowing it.

I had my suspicions a few months ago. My brother was visiting from Trinidad and she introduced him to her boyfriend. My brother, who is remarkably polite, was about to ask the young man, "And what do you do for a living?" The words, he said, for some odd reason, stuck in his throat. He told me it was the man's eyes. They appeared to have seen everything life offered by way of morbidity.

And then I remembered a conversation with my young relative from some time ago. She was hell-bent on lending a hand to some young fellow who had come from Jamaica and, in an enterprising way, had made money in the import/export trade. But, she said, he couldn't get a proper bank account. I asked whether the commodity was drugs. She reacted with fury; I was guilty of all the prejudices of whites. I told her that our family had a long tradition of anti-snobbery, of assisting the less fortunate. But there are horses for courses and she seemed to be heading for trouble. At the beginning of the conversation, she was off to Jamaica. At the end of it, I told her she was going nowhere and that was all. I was acting, and still am, in loco parentis, and my word was law.

Our relationship ran cold for a while. She would phone the house from time to time, but not speak directly with me. But I saw that she had left a photograph of herself dancing in sweet embrace with a young man at a nightclub. I could see the backs and faces of several young men and women. I was convinced she was dealing with several folk of doubtful character. There was a certain vulgarity of dress - or perhaps, I should say, a lack of subtlety.

And then came the crisis. Early on Saturday morning she was swanning around in a car with two guys. The car was under close surveillance and the trio were eventually stopped by the police. "We are armed police officers. Please get out of the car with your hands above your head," came the polite injunction. She had a spliff in her purse, which is a norm among young blacks, both men and women.

Off they all went to Charing Cross police station, where she discovered that her companions were to be questioned about a vicious murder. Her tiny world of fantasy had come tumbling down. The officers of the Met's operation against the Yardies, codenamed Trident, were breathing down her neck. She was treated fairly but firmly, and had good legal representation.

She came clean. She knew very little of anything at all. She could say that she had just passed her A-levels at a college in central London. She had worked at a high street chain store for her Christmas money and was about to start a new job on Tuesday. As I write, she is at work. She is not a hardened criminal, just a passionate young woman only recently out of her teens and playing with fire.

And fire it was, literally. Some weeks ago, I described a rather horrible murder at the bottom of my street. The scene of the murder was ringed with blue police ribbon which started just outside my door. Several young men, it would appear, were involved. That was the incident which led to her temporary incarceration.

Operation Trident finally decided that she, at least, did not belong to the group of assailants. In fact, she was an innocent girl of good family background who had allowed herself to drift into danger, dark and grim.

Upon her release, we spoke. I refrained from a verbal attack, embraced her lovingly, and accepted her apologies and thanks with love and generosity. All her fantasies of genuine altruism had come to a bitter end. And I couldn't help but quote my late father: "Ignorance is a dear school in which none other but fools learn."

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